For those not really experienced in recognizing XBee API frames from a byte stream: there’s not a single valid frame to be found inside all those bytes. But this is what my Coordinator received today.

But that’s OK; i intentionally left the XBee running on low batteries; I wanted to see what would happen. My code that should recognize valid XBee API packets just got it’s ultimate real life test. Cause normally, the byte stream coming from the Zigbee Coordinator is so clean you can hardly test it without writing a special tool that creates a mix of garbage, valid and invalid frames. Now i know for sure my code works! 🙂

Another good thing i saw, is that this ‘dying’ XBee didn’t create that much traffic resulting in other XBee’s not being able to get their messages to the Coordinator anymore.

This is really important actually; imagine you’re on holiday and a sensor runs out of battery power; do you really want to monitor your Home Automation system for that kind of trouble while you’re at the other side of the world? Become a slave of your own system? And have to call your neighbor that feeds the cat to remove the batteries or worse ? (“I don’t care how you do it, just do it.. Cut some red wires if you have to!”) Just to keep the system running? Not me!

In the meantime, this really nice weather only makes you want to play outside; sitting behind a computer with an airco blowing cold air in your neck is not my favorite right now: